2014-02-21

The field in this year's edition of The 25 Man Roster Challenge is
jam-packed with all-star calibre participants. We were able to get
ballots from the president of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, the
MLB beat writer for the Blue Jays, a finalist from the MLB Fan Cave, the
beat writer for the biggest newspaper in the country, a writer who is
in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and many great bloggers and fans of the team alike.

We want to thank all of you for interest and wish you all good luck.

Before
we get to the individual ballots, we'd like to point out some interesting facts
about them. This year, there were 22 ballots cast and all of them
contained the following 14 players:

A few players only appear on 1 ballot; these are the long shots, so to speak:

Drew Hutchinson, Neil Wagner, Rickey Romero, Sean Nolin.

We
hinted that the Blue Jays may be forced to carry an extra reliever to
start the year due to the volume of quality pitchers in camp who are out
of options. The brain trust has already started to float the idea.
Of the 22 ballots cast, 8 contain a 13-man pitching staff while the
remaining 14 go with the more conventional 12-man pitching staff. How
the team ultimately decides to go in that regard will be the deal-breaker in this challenge.

Height doesn't measure heart,
but nobody seems to care just yet. Top prospect Marcus Stroman did not
find his way onto a ballot, which is somewhat surprising.

As
for the mystery pitcher, it was interesting to note that over half the
ballots cast selected a player that is not currently on the 40-man
roster. The voting breakdown was dead even, with 6 participants
selecting Ervin Santana and 6 going with Ubaldo Jimenez.

In
what can only be described as random, all 22 ballots are different.
There is no favourite this year. Think about that for a second. We asked
all of you to give us just 25 names and nobody came up with the same 25
names. That's the current state of this team in a nutshell.

So
that's the deal. Below you will find the individual ballots. There
isn't really a good way to do this in terms of presentation so apologies
for the long and repetitive nature of this post. The numbers after the
names on the ballots is the tiebreaker—the team's spring training record.

This was the only ballot to not select the name Steve Delabar. We did some follow up on this omission and the reasoning behind it was solid. Delabar has an option remaining left and it was a difficult decision but he was left off this ballot. From All Star to Buffalo?

2014-02-13

The 25 Man Roster Challenge deadline is coming quick. If you intend to play your ballot must be in by Saturday February 15th at midnight. Check out this post for info on all the rules, how to play and prizes!

As much as we want to see your Toronto Blue Jays sign a free agent pitcher to help us out in the rotation this year, we'd really like it if this happened after the deadline to have your ballot in. We think this might add yet another element of the unknown into the process of selecting the 25 names you think will be on the team opening day.

Anthopoulos said Wednesday he’d be open to adding a player during spring training, though it might be “a little bit awkward” #BlueJays
— Ben Nicholson-Smith (@bnicholsonsmith) January 31, 2014

If you need a bit of insider assistance selecting the players on your ballot, we've taken the time to collect a few articles that might prove helpful to you.

Shi basically breaks down all the battles for you. He does have McGowan in the bullpen but it should be noted he will be stretched out as a starter in the beginning of camp. Not sure how wise an idea this is but he could very well end up in the number five slot in the rotation. It should also be noted that he went with the classic four man bench by giving some love to Brent Morel. The possibility of an eight man bullpen to start the year is quite high in our estimation. Especially if it means we have to carry a plug like Brent Morel as the guy who might play twice a week.

Courtesy of Gregor, here's a closer look at the full list of players attending camp:

Hope you can join us and play. Terribly sorry for the weekend deadline but we really have zero control over the reporting dates. Not sure what the team intends to do with all these pitchers and catchers on a Sunday but it probably involves a bunch of doctors and needles.